Mad John Mytton

John Mytton was a sportsman and politician, but above all one of the world's greatest ever profligates. His life is riddled with stories of total abandon that started from an early age.

At the age of 10, for example, he persuaded his widowed mother to allow him to have his own pack of hounds.

Shortly after, his tutor William Owen was obliged to spend the night with a horse that had been coaxed up the stairs by Mytton and into Owen's bedroom.

In 1807 he was sent to Westminster School but was asked to leave after a year for fighting the masters. He was then sent to Harrow where he lasted for only three days. Destined for Cambridge University, where he had ordered 2,000 bottles of port to await his arrival, he thought better of the arrangement at the last minute and set off instead on the Grand Tour.

In 1819 Mytton decided to follow a family tradition and to seek election to Parliament as MP for Shrewsbury. As part of his campaign, he walked among his constituents with ten pound notes attached to his hat. These were replaced as soon as they were taken so Mytton spent GBP 10,000 to secure his seat. The expense was in vain since it was a hot June day when he first attended Parliament, the debate was uninteresting, and he lost patience. He left the House early and never returned.

Mytton had an iron constitution and customarily drank five bottles of port in the morning.

He kept 60 cats, which he dressed in the livery suitable to their breed, and 2,000 dogs.

Friends and neighbours were obliged to accustom themselves to Mytton's preferred ways of amusing himself. These included bringing Baronet, his favourite horse, into the house, sitting it by the fire and serving it mulled port; and getting his horse dealer, Underhill, drunk and putting him into bed with two bull terriers and Nell, the brown bear.

At other times it amused him to dress himself as a highwayman and to rob his own dinner guests on their way home.